Dr. Schmertmann's current research includes developing new estimation methods for demographic rates in small areas with sparse data, forecasting cohort fertility and childlessness, applying epidemiological stastistics to demography, measuring the fertility of US immigrants, and investigating immigration's effects on national age structures. He currently serves as Editor of Demographic Research.

US Census Bureau Contract: "Analysis of 1996 American Community Survey Test Data for Brevard County, FL". 1999. ($10,000).

"I became interested in demographic phenomena not so much for the phenomena
per se, nor for the science they inspired, nor for their political, economic, and social
effects, but as signs. For they are the invisible signs of what has been happening
below the surface and reveal collective attitudes toward life and death, at times almost
subconscious and usually kept hidden." Phillipe Ariès, 20th century French Historian